Improving Schools through Networks: A New Approach to Urban School Reform

Abstract

Research suggests that decentralized management reforms have produced changes in classroom practice and higher student achievement in some schools. However, many schools simply do not have the capacity to improve on their own. A few school districts are experimenting with a new approach to school reform—school networks—that relies on collaboration between schools. This article draws on data from an evaluation of the Annenberg Challenge in Los Angeles, a reform effort that experimented with school networks as a vehicle for improving schools. As a theoretical framework, the authors applied Lawler's (1991) high-involvement model, which suggests that in order for an organization's improvement efforts to be successful, resources must be decentralized, and stakeholders must be actively collaborating on the reform process. The authors found that when school networks created structures that decentralized power and distributed organizational resources throughout the network, they also enhanced school capacity for reform.

Thinking more deeply about networks in education

“…There are networks in which learning in mostly collegial and horizontal (Veugelers and Zijlstra 2002, p. 169), and others where it is centered almost exclusively on one-to-one relations with a small group of experts (McDonald and Klein 2003;Wohlstetter et al 2003).…”

Improving schools through collaboration: a mixed methods study of school-to-school partnerships in the primary sector

“…The former tend to be insufficiently adapted to context and therefore often show patchy results, while the latter lack scale and impact on the broader environment or system. Collaboration and networking are seen as having specific advantages for school improvement, which include allowing schools to pool resources and improve the provision of professional development (Lieberman, 2000), allowing schools to plug 'structural gaps' in their own expertise and skills (Muijs, West & Ainscow, 2010), and allowing them to develop mutual support mechanisms and overcome an overly inward-looking approach (Wohlstetter, Malloy, Chau & Polhemus, 2003). Collaboration between schools also allows them to take ownership of the change process, which is often a problem in large-scale reform efforts (Muis et al, 2010).…”

Systemic Reform in a Federated System:Los Angeles at the Turn of the Millennium

“…School families were not subdivisions of districts in which the leadership was given authority over the principals and teachers within. Instead, they resembled networks or collaboratives to which people attached themselves because they provided useful services, information, and support (Wohlstetter et al, 2003).…”

“…That proposal blended the expressed commitments of the Annenberg Challenge with school reform ideas that had already gained broad support in Los Angeles. The core idea of the proposal was to reach beyond individual schools to establish and assist school "families," each constituted by a high school and the middle and elementary schools from which it primarily drew its students (Wohlstetter et al, 2003). The notion of focusing assistance on families rather than individual schools was encouraged by Gregorian, and it captured an unrealized ideal of the LEARN reforms.…”